The Toronto Rat Problem: What the City Is Doing and What You Must Do

Rats are more visible across Toronto than they were a few years ago, and in 2025 the City approved a formal Rat Response Plan to coordinate how it deals with them. For a property owner, two things matter: the City is now organizing its side of the response, and you are still legally responsible for keeping your own property free of rats under the rodent and property standards rules. This page explains why rat activity is rising, what the Rat Response Plan actually does, what your duty is, and how and when to report rats to 311.

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Why are rats rising in Toronto?

Rat activity is rising because the things rats need, food, water, and cover, have all become more available at once, and because construction keeps disturbing the colonies that were already here. The City's Rat Response Plan report points to a combination of drivers rather than a single cause.

The main ones:

• Construction and excavation. Digging disturbs established burrows and forces rats out into the surrounding neighbourhood to find new harbourage. A large or long construction project can push rats onto nearby residential streets.
• Organic waste and food. Green-bin organics, backyard compost, dropped fruit, pet food, and overflowing garbage all feed rats and let a colony grow.
• Warmer conditions and mild winters that extend the breeding season, so populations recover faster year over year.
• Aging infrastructure, including sewers and older housing stock, that gives rats routes and shelter.

None of these is inside any single homeowner's control, which is part of why the City moved to a coordinated plan rather than leaving it entirely to individual complaints.

What is Toronto's Rat Response Plan?

The Rat Response Plan is a City-wide strategy, approved through Council in 2025, to coordinate how Toronto reduces and manages rat populations across divisions instead of handling rats complaint by complaint in isolation. It sets up a more joined-up approach to prevention, response, and public information, and it treats rats as a shared city problem rather than only a private pest issue.

In practice the Plan is about coordination: aligning the divisions that touch rats, from waste and water to enforcement and public health, addressing rats around construction and City property, and giving residents clearer guidance on prevention and reporting. The full detail is in the City's Rat Response Plan report.

The Plan changes how the City organizes its own response. It does not remove your legal duty to keep your own property free of rats. Those are two separate things, and it is easy to assume the first cancels the second. It does not.

What is a property owner's duty under the rodent bylaw?

Under Toronto's property standards rules, the owner is responsible for keeping the property free of rodents and for removing the conditions that harbour them. That duty sits with the owner regardless of what the City is doing at the neighbourhood level, and it is enforceable.

The City's rodent control and property standards page sets out the expectation: property must be kept free of rodents, and conditions that attract or shelter them, such as accessible garbage, harbourage, and unsealed openings, must be dealt with. An owner who ignores a rat problem can be subject to a property standards order and enforcement, not just the infestation itself.

What do you actually have to do?

You have to remove what feeds and shelters rats on your property, close the openings they use to get in, and deal with any active infestation rather than letting it run. That is the practical shape of the legal duty.

The concrete steps:

• Cut off the food. Secure garbage and green-bin organics in bins with tight lids, keep compost rodent-resistant or enclosed, pick up fallen fruit, and do not leave pet food outside.
• Remove the cover. Clear woodpiles, debris, and dense ground clutter against the foundation, under decks, and around sheds, since these give rats a place to burrow and hide.
• Seal the openings. Close gaps around pipes and utilities, foundation cracks, and holes under garage doors and at door corners, using metal and mortar a rat cannot chew through.
• Deal with an active infestation. If there are burrows, droppings, or runs, treat and collapse the burrows and control the colony, then keep the property maintained so it does not return. Burrow work and exterior sealing are the core of the job, which is why we cover them in detail on the rat control page.

Because rats travel between properties, doing your part matters even when the source is next door: a maintained lot is far less attractive, and it is the part the City can hold you to.

How and when do you report rats to 311?

Report to 311 when the problem involves City property, a City service, or a situation beyond your own lot, such as rats around a City construction site, in a park or public space, tied to a sewer or roadway, or a property you believe is not meeting the property standards rules. 311 is the City's central point for service requests and directs the issue to the division that handles it.

You can reach 311 by phone at 311 within Toronto, or online through the City's 311 service. When you report, give the specific location and what you are seeing, burrows, droppings, sightings, so it reaches the right division. For rats confined to your own private property, 311 will generally point you to prevention and control, since removing the infestation there is the owner's responsibility, but reporting a wider neighbourhood source, such as an unmaintained property or a construction site, is exactly what the City wants to hear about so it can act on the shared part of the problem.

Integrated pest management and the move away from poison

The direction of both City policy and modern pest control is integrated pest management, which means reducing rats by removing food and harbourage and sealing entry points first, and using rodenticide sparingly and carefully rather than as the main tool. This reduced-rodenticide approach exists because poison alone does not solve a rat problem and it carries real risks.

Health Canada, through its Pest Management Regulatory Agency, regulates rodenticides and requires them to be used in tamper-resistant stations near homes, because loose bait poisons pets, children, and the wildlife that eats poisoned rats. The integrated approach leans on the parts that actually last, sanitation and exclusion, and treats bait as a controlled supplement, not the plan. It is the same logic behind why a serious rat job is mostly burrow work and sealing rather than putting down poison and hoping.

Common questions

Reviewed August 2026.

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